ORTIZ: Game's up for furlough play

They finished the narrative on Friday, cast the villain and set
the story in motion. Then on Monday, the California Supreme Court
blew it up.

With the state budget three months late and $19 billion upside
down, lawmakers agreed last week to whack $896 million from
employee compensation. Negotiators agreed on the figure by
extrapolating savings from recent contract concessions made by six
unions representing 37,000 state workers.

Legislative leaders settled on an approach that would let Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger ---- who is in talks with another half-dozen
labor groups representing 160,000 or so employees ---- furlough
state workers whose unions didn't agree to concessions.

The Republican governor was suited to the role. For nearly two
years, he claimed the executive muscle to impose unpaid days off.
The administration even had a line for the media: "State workers
need to cut back, just like every family and business in
California."

After furloughs commenced in February 2009, the
Democratic-controlled Legislature passed budget measures that
assumed unspecified employee cost cuts equal to the payroll savings
from furloughs.

When the governor continued the policy, Senate President Pro Tem
Darrell Steinberg condemned it and put up legislation to exempt
some state employees. (The measures failed.)

"I was at the table fighting as hard as I could," Steinberg told
The State Worker last October, to keep Schwarzenegger from ordering
three furlough days per month that whack state worker pay and hours
by 14 percent.

"The governor didn't have to furlough," Steinberg said.

In retrospect, the Sacramento Democrat was fighting the
Legislature's furlough policy.

The state high court's decision Monday said governors can't
furlough because the power to set wages and working conditions
ultimately rests with the Legislature. But, it added, lawmakers
tacitly approved the policy and made it retroactively legal by
approving a budget that assumed furlough savings.

The ruling upended last week's carefully crafted plan for
legislators to authorize employee cost cuts again and leave the
grubby furlough work to Schwarzenegger. They'd holler about it
later.

The court made it clear: No more plausible deniability for
Steinberg and other Democrats when it comes to who is responsible
for furloughs. It doesn't happen without their OK.

A Senate Democratic caucus document obtained by The Bee outlines
employee compensation cuts in the budget ---- and illustrates the
conflict Steinberg and Co. faced to rewrite the furlough
narrative.

First line: "$896 million from savings attributable to
collective bargaining agreements and furloughs." Third line: "No
statutory imposition of furloughs."

Watch the budget bill details to see how the furlough story
turns out.